Drama in Overland Interesting to Watch

Have you been watching the recent drama in the St. Louis County municipality of Overland, Missouri?

Newly elected mayor won by just four votes.

New mayor declares chief of police & city attorney positions vacant even though occupied by persons installed by prior mayor.

New mayor appoints replacements for chief of police & city attorney without approval of city council.

St. Louis County Prosecutor files suit questioning legality of new mayor’s actions.

Judge sets hearing date of May 15th, grants temporary restraining order keeping prior chief of police and city attorney in their jobs.

Mayor attempted to cancel tonight’s city council meeting.

The challenger that lost by four votes calls for a recount. Election results show that 46 votes ballots not counted in mayoral race.

It should be noted an amazing 32% of registered voters cast ballots in Overland’s recent elections. Impressive. Three candidates for mayor had very close totals: 964 vs. 1,111 vs. 1,115.

I haven’t the slightest idea how urban-minded the newly elected mayor or her challenger are, if at all. Anyone know more detail about Overland and the views of the various factions?

[UPDATE – 5/9/06@ 6:45am – Here is the website of the woman that lost by four votes: marybethconlon.com]

– Steve

The Mayor of Affton?

J. Patrick O’Brien recently declared victory in the April 4th general elections as Mayor of Affton. What is funny about this is despite the huge number of municipalities within St. Louis County, Affton is not one of them. Like Lemay, Affton is a portion of unincorporated St. Louis County. These areas, although not separate towns or cities, have a strong history and local identity.

I’ve enjoyed reading the blog of “mayor” J. Patrick O’Brien as he declared his candidacy, created yard signs and such. Sometimes he just injects a bit of humor and other times he is commenting on real issues in his bit of the region.

O’Brien, as Affton’s (un)official Mayor, is far kinder than I would be about development. For example, a recent post talks about how QuikTrip has moved a bit further west on Gravois:

It was before my time, but another Afftonian says that they fought very hard to get the “wedge” corner at Gravois & Siebert. My source tells me that the old location ended up being a bad layout and when the new parcel became available they jumped at the chance to get more space. As you can see in the second photo, the new layout is nice and spacious such as you normally see at their other locations.

Nice? Spacious? Let’s see, they probably strong-armed someone into selling their properties on the wedge where they’ve been for the last 10 years or so and now have left it vacant while they build an even bigger (read: sprawling auto-centric) location. You can see his post for pictures. Maybe during the campaign QuikTrip gave O’Brien a free slurpee?

What I love about O’Brien’s attitude and resulting site is that he is taking charge and talking about issues in a specific area of region. Maybe we’ll see him on the actual St. Louis County Council someday…

– Steve

Removing Highways to Restructure the St. Louis Region

Rather than spend hundreds of millions on rebuilding highway 40 (I-64 to the rest of the map reading world) we should just tear it out completely. Don’t look so confused, I’m totally serious. This is not a belated April fools joke.

Our highways in the middle of urban areas are relics to the cheap gas economy that is quickly coming to an end. In addition to removing highway 40, we should remove all the highways within our I-270/I-255 Loop: I-55, I-70, I-44, and I-170

I’ve not gone crazy nor have I been smoking anything.

And before you scroll down to the comments section to explain all the conventional wisdom reasons why this won’t work I ask that you hear me out first. I know we cannot just remove the highways and leave the balance of our political entities, zoning and other systems in place and expect this to make a lick of sense. Therefore, I have some basic assumptions & qualifications that would need to accompany the removal of any or all highways in our main urbanized area of the region. The likelihood of this coming together in our lifetime is slim but as the economy changes we will need to change and adapt to remain competitive with other regions.

Keep in mind that 60 years ago men took maps and drew lines where we’d wipe out entire neighborhoods for highways and housing projects. In hindsight, huge mistakes were made that disrupted lives and cost millions. Today we are still dealing with the aftermath of these poor decisions. So I’m taking a map and looking at ways we can undo damage previously done without inflicting new damage.
… Continue Reading

Target Bike Rack Completely Useless

Recently I was heading into the fairly new Target Greatland at Brentwood Promenade and noticed the bike rack adjacent to the entry (left of entry in photo).

I’m always happy to see businesses include a bike rack, however, it is nice when they actually install it in a place where someone might actually be able to use it.

The only way this bike rack, a unit designed to hold five (5) bicycles, can actually be used by someone is to lock a single bike parallel to the rack. So the five-bike rack becomes a single bike rack.

The reason it cannot be used as designed is the rack is mounted too close the back wall. If it were pulled out from the wall a foot or so it would allow the front wheel of a bike to go beyond the rack. This would allow for three bikes — the two outer positions and the center — to be secured. The other two spaces are designed to be approached from the opposite side. But even pulling the rack forward by a foot leaves little room for a cyclist to get around the bike to lock the frame and wheel to the rack.

This facility was professionally designed and professionally built. Someone thought to include a bike rack, perhaps that was a Target requirement. But the professionals, somewhere along the line, failed to make sure the proper rack was specified for the location. Yet another example where someone knowledgeable of such issues should have been reviewing the drawings, specifications and monitoring the construction process.

– Steve

REALTORS® Upset About New Law In Ferguson

As an active licensed Broker-Salesperson in the state of Missouri I am a member of the National Association of REALTORS®, Missouri Association of REALTORS® and the St. Louis Association of REALTORS®. As a result I get lots of email from each of these organizations. It should be noted the real estate profession is one of the most organized and well funded lobbying groups. And seldom do I agree with the position they take on issues.

Here is an email I received from the St. Louis Association:

CALL TO ACTION!

This is an important issue that affects the property rights and civil rights of landlords and tenants.

The City of Ferguson recently passed bill 6731 which, in addition to other things, with regard to rental property requires:

· Property owner to obtain a license to rent property.

· Owner to run police check on themselves and submit this with the application.

· Some owners hire an ASHI inspector to inspect the property and certify that it is in compliance with all of the City of Ferguson’s codes

· Owner to hire a property manager that resides within 25 miles of your rental property and furnish the name and all contact info to the city.

· Owner to sign an affidavit affirming that none of their tenants are registered sex offenders in any of the 50 states nor SHOULD they be! First off, this is next to impossible to determine, second this puts an incredible amount of liability on the property owner. It should be noted by the way, while the city does not require any such affidavit if you are an owner occupant.

Even if you don’t own property in Ferguson or have clients that do, please still take the time to respond to this. While this is the worst example we have seen thus far of a municipality violating peoples rights we have been seeing more and more similar ordinances from other municipalities so if we don’t stop it now it may be just a short time
before laws like this spread.

The St. Louis Association of Realtors has authorized the funding for a lawsuit to fight this law. We need your help though, please email or call the City Manager for the City of Ferguson and tell him you think this ordinance should be repealed immediately. His phone number and link to email is below as well as a sample email message you can paste into your email.

If you would like to view the entire ordinance click on this link:

http://www.fergusoncity.com/pdf/Bill6731.pdf

City Manager, Arthur Krieger Akrieger@FergusonCity.com or phone (314) 521-7721.

Sample message:

Dear City Manager Krieger:

I am one of the 10,000+ members of the St. Louis Association of
REALTORS® and as a champion of private property rights I take great
exception to bill 6731 which was recently passed by your council. I
feel this, among other things, violates the property rights as well as
civil rights of landlords and tenants and would urge you to repeal this
piece of legislation.

Our association does believe in and support property maintenance and
occupancy codes & permits (both of which your city already has on the
books) provided these laws are applied to all property, not just tenant
occupied property and provided the occupancy permits are only upon
change in occupancy. Bill 6731 singles out a class of property owner
and class or occupant and applies laws to them different then
owner-occupied property and this is what we object to.

So I read through the entire bill and it seems balanced to me. Many of the requirements come into play only if the property owner has properties with violations or nuisance complaints. Absentee landlords are a problem in many areas and it seems like Ferguson is serious about the problem. Too many people see those late night infomercials about getting rich in real estate, buy a property all the way across town and then wonder why they have issues.

I think Ferguson’s actions send a clear message — if you are going to be in the business of owning rental property you need a business license and you need to conduct yourself in the best manner. If you are in the business of renting properties, their ordinance suggests, it is also wise to know the sex offender law to make sure you don’t end up renting to someone you should not. Again, a good business practice.

And owning rental property is a business. Why should these business owners not be subjected to standards that others business owners must?

The rights of the owner-occupant are being protected here, in my view. Because it is often the local homeowners that must deal with problem rental properties.

– Steve